Twenty-year-old Yang Yang stands out in a crowd. A collegiate athlete turned fashion model, she’s a mixed-race French Taiwanese who is all too used to being fetishized, though she doesn’t speak a word of French. Her tenuous sense of self, as one who is often admired or desired but always somehow separate, leads her on a tortuous life’s path where identity, loyalty and direction are all thrown into question.

UCLA Center for Chinese Studies and UCLA Film & Television Archive in association with Taiwan Academy present a Taiwan film series:

WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? TAIWAN AS CROSSROADS

(Feb. 15 to March 19, 2014; Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum)

A national cinema distinguishes itself by filmmakers and films, but also, of course, by its coherence around themes and fascinations. The cinema of Taiwan, with its own world-renowned auteurs and healthy spread of popular genres, offers a striking distinction that appears in many guises: the formulation of Taiwan as a locus of plurality, liminality, change, exchange, and other de-centering principles that construct the nation not so much as a place of foundations, but of negotiations. In part, this is certainly a response to Taiwan’s national history, which also informs the national imaginary: an experience of massive migrations and multiple overlapping colonizations spanning many centuries, as well as economic shifts that have witnessed increasingly frenetic flows of capital and labor in recent years. Corresponding with paradigm shifts in scholarly thought about the reality and image of Taiwan in the world, this film series, featuring new and classic comedies, dramas, formally rigorous art films and historical epics, offers visions of a nation acting not only as an origin or a destination, but as a relay point or “hub” through which people, art, investment, technology and social change pass, undergoing creative adaptations and transformations. This vision in turn presents a rewarding insight into Taiwan’s image and self-image, and accounts for much of the beauty and dynamism of its cinematic output. We are pleased to offer this eclectic selection, magnifying all of these themes.

Curated by Robert Chi and Shannon Kelley, this film series is part of the “Spotlight Taiwan” program at the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, with financial support from the Taiwan Ministry of Culture.